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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26487133">Wash</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/DottoraQN/pseuds/DottoraQN'>DottoraQN</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Critical Role (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Hair Washing, I just really love Xhorhaus molly ok, Introspection, This is really self indulgent, Xhorhaus, Xhorhouse (Critical Role)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 11:09:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>982</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26487133</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/DottoraQN/pseuds/DottoraQN</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Molly washes his hair and thinks about how he got to where he is</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Wash</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I was washing my very curly, very dense hair and thinking about how much I fucking hate it, so here is a fic centered around Molly having a self care day, cause I picture Molly's hair a little like mine.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Molly sighed, leaning his head back onto the ledge of the large tub in the bottom of the tower of the Xhorhaus. Despite all of his chatter and the million thoughts that ran through his brain every day, he was overjoyed to finally have some alone time. The rest of the Nien had gone out shopping at Jester’s behest, Yasha and Fjord wanting to look at the ever changing weaponry styles of Xhorhas, Caleb and Veth needing spell components, and the clerics wanting to try brewing their own healing potions again. None of those had sounded particularly interesting to Molly, so he had begged off, claiming to need to wash his hair.<br/><br/>
It wasn’t entirely a lie, he did need to wash his hair, and it did take an obscenely long time with how much of it there was, but he still felt a little guilty that he hadn’t given his friends the real reason. Shaking his head to rid himself of his misplaced guilt, he gently poked at the Arcane Tap with his toe, forever grateful that Caleb and Caduceus had decided to enchant the bath so that someone didn’t have to manually cast the spells needed to refill the tub every time someone wanted to use it.<br/><br/>
Hot water streamed into the recessed ground, causing steam to rise around Molly as he sank into the water, letting the fine smelling liquid permeate his plum colored shock of hair. He let his mind wander as he soaked, remembering days during the beginning of his time at the carnival when something like this was a rare luxury. There were many times when there was little water outside of a singular well in towns that they visited, so bathing at all was difficult. Molly had been the subject of a reluctant prestidigitation more than once, as had all of his family at the time. He hated the way that prestidigitation made his hair feel; the spell never made his skin feel any different than it usually did, but the nature of the spell removed all moisture from his hair. He much preferred to wash it himself, even though it felt like it took a year.<br/><br/>
The first time that he had visited Zadash with the carnival, Desmond had counted all of the money that they made after their first show and exclaimed proudly that he had a gift for everyone. That bath house trip, Molly’s first bath house trip, was one of his most cherished memories. He’d never seen that much warm water in his life and he hung on Gustav’s every word as the half-elf explained how the water distribution and heating system worked to anyone that would listen. Yasha and the twins had taught him how to swim, all four of them bursting into fits of giggles when Yasha jumped into the water, soaking everyone in the vicinity.<br/><br/>
Molly smiled at the memory. He wouldn’t give his current life for anything, but he did miss the simplicity of traveling with the carnival. There were no wars to stop, no demons to chase, and no gods to care about other than his own. He was brought out of his ruminations by the sound of the Arcane Tap sputtering and shutting off. Somehow Caleb and Cad had built the thing so that it would shut off automatically when the water got to a certain level. Molly would never claim to understand how any of that stuff worked, but he was also intimately fascinated with how magic could be used to make people’s lives easier and not just to hurt people. Molly had followed Caleb and Caduceus around Rosohna, trying to stay out of the way and just observe as they made the necessary preparations to build this new accommodation into the house.<br/><br/>
He supposed that he should get to the task at hand, or he would have sat here all day, letting the water get cold and his skin shrivel up only to leave the tub absentmindedly and be left with not only dirty hair, but wet dirty hair. He grabbed his scented soap that he had purchased on Bisaft isle, the now small bar smelling of honey and oranges. He ran the bar through the water, wetting it and creating a small amount of bubbles in his hands. He worked the lather through the subtle point that his hairline formed at the apex of his forehead, pushing the soap back between his horns and letting the remainder of what was on his hands diffuse into his curls at the back of his head.<br/><br/>
Repeating the process several times, Molly finally deemed his hair soapy enough and he set the bar aside to focus on his body. He ran one of the soft rags that Jester had knit for the house over his arms, watching the way that the bath oils in the water made his tattoos shimmer, almost like they would come to life and walk off his skin.<br/><br/>
As he ran his hands and the cloth over the rest of his body, he thought about how strange and immaterial his connection to this vessel had been. Waking up in a shallow grave or slicing himself open just to protect himself and his friends, it all felt very imperminant, until he started decorating it. The various tattoos and piercings he had gotten to cover the dull ache of a past that wasn’t his own now shone with the personality of Mollymauk Tealeaf, washing away Lucien or Nonagon or whomever this body had belonged to before.<br/><br/>
Molly sighed, banishing the thoughts from his mind. The soap had sat long enough in his hair and he wanted to spend some of his alone time painting his cards, not just sitting around in the bath watching his skin shrivel up. He tipped his body back into the water, submerging his hair and letting himself float.</p>
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